Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  Sarah slid a gordito covered with shredded cheese into the microwave, but Jeep’s appetite had been whetted for adventure, not burritos.

  “I am a homebody, but nada times nada happens here. If aliens were coming to earth? Reno would be their last choice for a good time. Let’s apply for jobs at The Magnet in San Francisco. I’ll bet there’s a radical music scene on the Coast.”

  “Radical old-time music? That’s an oxymoron. San Francisco,” Sarah said slowly as if testing the words for flavor while she spun lettuce dry for the burritos, “it’s really, really far from the mountains, Jeep, and nervous-making. My parents wanted me to go to school there. We went a few times when I was small, but even Reno’s too big for me, Jeep. I never want to go back to San Francisco.”

  She’d tapped the floor frantically, practicing her solo in her head. Maybe someone in the audience that night would be out from Nashville looking for a techno-country fiddler. Maybe this wasn’t such a weird idea, but, kind of like her destiny. She composed a newspaper item aloud: “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Teitel proudly announce the appointment of their daughter–umm—Sarah Teitel-Morgan to the position of Design Engineer for the San Francisco Magnet Hotel.”

  “Based on my vast experience?” Sarah asked with a laugh. She took salsa from the refrigerator. “And I am so sure there’s a dire shortage of wanna-be architects in San Fran,” she mocked. “Maybe the casino will give you more solos?”

  “I don’t want casino solos. I want to play real music with a real band and get out of that toy store for flabby tourists.” Jeep clenched her fists. “It hurts, I need to play so bad. But you! You could go to the architecture school at Berkeley, Sar.” She sniffed at the warm food smell venting from the nuker.

  “Between tours?”

  Jeep decided to work on that banjo tonight after practicing. She’d teach herself to play it. She filled her plate at the kitchen counter and took it to the window seat over the parking lot. Did she have to bail on Sarah to get where she was going? The food lost all its taste. She sluiced extra salsa on her burrito. “Maybe they have an architecture school in Nashville. You could design the Brand New Opry.”

  “Nashville? Are you totally out of your gourd?”

  Jeep snagged a chunk of escaping avocado and pointed her green fingertip at Sarah. “Sarah, it’s kind of like it’ll never be a new century again in my life even if I live to be a hundred. It’s a time when I want to do it all! You never even want to dream.”

  The big living room window faced the street. She watched as an office worker left through the glass front door of a spiff old-style building. Next door recovering addicts smoked on the steps of a drug and alcohol rehab house that needed rehabbing itself. Had she hurt Sarah’s feelings? She had to say this stuff or explode. Maybe she had exploded. Poor Sarah. “Geez, talk about beauty and the beast. Somebody designed these fab twenties buildings and what happens? People grind out dirty cigarettes on the porch rails. It’s like playing music to a casino crowd.”

  Sarah took her hand, kissing Jeep’s knuckles and looking up shyly at her from under his eyebrows. “I do dream, Jeep. I still dream of getting work in Idaho and adopting a slew of kids to raise there. I haven’t begun to show you how beautiful my hometown is. Mountains and waterfalls, cool air, green grasses, elk and bear. And you could fly anywhere to make music, or paint up a big bus like that old hippie writer and travel the country to old-time music festivals. And women’s festivals, if you had a women’s band. I’d be waiting in the house I’m designing for us. With a barn-shaped music studio, where your band could rehearse. We could even have a homegrown band like your family did.”

  The lights went off in the office building and, one by one, the rest of the staff dispersed through the summer evening to their SUVs and minivans. Soon the air outside the city would fill with the smell of mesquite charcoal burning in backyards.

  “Yeah,” said Jeep, made a little uneasy by Sarah’s family talk, “we can turn our backs on adventure and devote ourselves to a quiet, normal life, sputtering out in Idaho.”

  “Can’t we have both?”

  Jeep watched a neighbor, an old dude on a walker, make his way along the street. “Don’t you want everything on the menu?”

  “I’m afraid of your dreams, Jeep. Afraid they’ll take you away from me. Take these delicious fingers away from me too.”

  She felt a quake of love for Sarah. “I am absolutely warped over you.”

  “Still?” Sarah said in her sweetest small hopeful voice.

  “Still.” Jeep kissed her, but she wasn’t at all sure she’d feel the same about Sarah-the-mom. And did Sarah expect her to enjoy having a houseful of screaming-meemie loud-mouth kids when she was trying to rehearse?

  “Let’s go country dancing this weekend!” Sarah cried with a chirp of laughter.

  Jeep had darted to their CD boom box and punched buttons until the Dixie Chicks’ high-energy voices propelled her into a jittery dance.

  Sarah had slipped her hand into Jeep’s and slowed her down until, pressed together, they danced.

  “Nothing in the world will take me from you, Sarah.” Jeep felt kind of weird, like she was saying something she only wanted to be true. She quickly pulled the shades on that thought.

  The peppy little six-guns and cactuses on the slot machine came back into focus, and she found her eyes were wet. She’d had to leave Reno, she told herself. She had to get out into the world and see what she could accomplish. She shook her head and checked to see how much she had left to play. Here she was, looking for fun in front of a video terminal display again. She played a line. At least she liked her job here. Sarah had always said that teaching kids was for saintly people. She would be so surprised, but only if Jeep told her, and so far she didn’t have the nerve to get back in touch with Sarah. What if she was living with someone new? The very thought filled her with pain. The whirling display stopped. She’d blown another dollar. Maybe she was blowing her life too, she thought with the hopeless bitterness that sometimes overtook her. Why wasn’t there anyone to tell her what to do?

  Dollar number three went the way of the first two. Number four. Hey, she was just warming up. A pop melody chimed up the row and a change dragon hurried over with a receipt for the player’s winnings. Bummer. She liked the old coins better; there was a romance to games of chance. This was like going to the grocery store. Okay, her last dollar. She rubbed her earring for luck, crossed her toes in her muddy running shoes, and was about to drop the coin when she felt arms squeeze around her from behind.

  “Holy shit!” she yelped. “Katie?”

  “Yeah, sweetie.” Katie kissed her very lightly on the cheek. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you here. Love the cowboy hat. You working on a new addiction?”

  Now she felt embarrassed about buying the black hat with its lavender band. “Get over yourself. I was never addicted to anything but you. What’re you doing here anyway?”

  “Truth? Getting a feel for rural America. Talking to some folks.”

  “You mean being a journalist.”

  Katie’s coy look still made Jeep’s hands sweat.

  “I stand accused. How’d you guess?”

  “Duh. The Sony?”

  A silence came between them. Jeep looked at the pattern of the casino rug, wanting instead to look into those always-burning eyes. She listened to the clatter and curses and yelps of triumph that filled the cavernous room, wanting instead Katie’s love talk.

  “I heard about your project,” Jeep told her. “The land babes are coming into Natural Woman fuming about losing their privacy to advance your career.”

  “Why is it only dykes are slamming me about it? If I can get this story out—Jeep! It’s not my career I’m working on here. Don’t you think an epic human interest documentary would help stop the rape of the old-growth forests?”

  Jeep was getting ready to play the last of her money. “Are you getting this wild gambling junkie action?” she asked with a sneer. “Maybe I don’t think
trees are more important than protecting lesbians. Hey! Turn that thing off!”

  “Why? You’re doing good. The first dyke to dialogue with me.”

  “You’re using me, Delgado.”

  “Jeep, remember we didn’t know why we wanted to do this women’s land thing? We felt pulled here? I think this is my reason. I’m not looking to out anybody. There’s a common denominator somewhere between the tree-huggers and the people losing jobs that, once I find it and get my message out there, may change our world.”

  The noise level around them had lowered with the camera’s presence. Katie’s charm level was at 300%. But Jeep was inured to that charm now.

  “Why bug me?” she asked and turned her back.

  “I miss you. I miss bouncing ideas off you. You have such incisive, cut-the-crap insights.”

  “Until your insight, not mine, that we were over. Until this insight that I should be part of your project whether I want to be or not.”

  A few months ago she’d been thrilled to be part of Katie’s ventures. A few months ago she would have—and had—followed Katie anywhere. Katie was awesome at getting what she wanted out of people.

  “I’m feeling beyond manipulated,” she said.

  Katie moved closer, whispering, “I’m not filming, Jeep. I’m trying to get some of the natives interested. If you’ll work with me for a couple of minutes, they’ll be into it. Please?”

  Jeep shoved the electronic button instead of pulling the arm down. Nothing. She could hear voices coming closer, the curious crowd closing in. She felt so confused. How could she long for Sarah one minute and regret losing Katie the next?

  As she took chances on her machine she could hear Katie telling the mike, “Many natives simply don’t make a connection between the environment, a family-values agenda, and their own problems. Are their children’s disabilities caused by a degraded environment? Can they accept making a livelihood inside a gambling establishment rather than continuing to gamble that Mother Nature and the increasingly multi-national timber corporations will provide? Could the drama of gay people in this state, where there are still remnants of attempts from the nineties to try to vote away the rights of gays, possibly be related to the anger and fear of generations of logging families now running clandestine dope farms?”

  Jeep still had a last play and as she mashed the button, she heard the camera. Bing, loser! Bing, loser! “Damn you!” She felt about as smart as fish bait. Katie was filming. She stood.

  Some woman, obviously clueless about Katie’s ambush and purpose there, trilled, “Is this going to be on the TV, honey?” She planted herself at Jeep’s machine.

  Jeep was no more than ten feet from the door when she heard the woman whoop and call “Bingo!” Man, she thought, there must be a journalism muse who spent her life by Katie’s side. That winner would tell Katie anything she wanted to know now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Leak

  “I don’t know how to patch roofs!” Katie complained when they reached the last item and she still had no work assignment.

  “Neither did any of us when we moved here?” said ever-tentative gray-haired Dorothea who made every sentence a question and was one of R’s ex-lovers.

  R asked quietly, “Do you think you’re unique?”

  Katie hated that she pouted around R. “I’ll slide off the moss, I know I will.”

  Solstice, the out-of-town customer at Jeep’s store in San Francisco who they’d originally come to visit, groaned. “Did you have to bring up the moss?” She tossed a log on the fire, but it was damp and smoke slid into the room. Katie coughed.

  Seven women lived at Spirit Ridge—plus Katie. In the dry season came campers, goddess worshipers, and burned-out freeloaders. Best, Katie had been told, were the city Ridgers who helped support the land with donations and work party/vacations. They’d pitch tents in the field or under the trees, tear off their shirts, get sunburned and lusty, and make plans to quit their jobs, which some actually did. It blew her away that a few, for the sake of two or three weeks of pure women’s space a year, went back to the cities and tithed what they earned there to protect the land.

  Tonight, at the monthly meeting, the lodge’s tiger cat sampled seven laps, kneading her claws into Katie’s thigh along the way, before settling in her basket beside the woodstove. They were having a late spring storm. Rain pelted the roof with every gust of wind. People in town said it was supposed to snow above 3000 feet. All this talk of outdoor chores seemed pretty ludicrous.

  She felt like crying. This was so cool, this homeland and these women like her who had made a sanctuary. She’d never even be able to conceive of such a place, and a handful of them had bought the land, built the structures, put in electricity, plumbing, the whole nine yards. It wasn’t exactly up to subdivision standards, but who set the standards? The point was, they’d done it, back in the 1970’s when she was an infant. They’d done it for themselves, and kept it going for her.

  According to R, they’d been on the verge of losing Spirit Ridge when she came along several years ago. Katie had the impression that R had taken over the management of their funds and found new resources until it was out of fiscal danger, but no one talked details. It was easy to see that she was the big cheese here now, whether they called themselves a collective or not. They’d finally accumulated enough money to buy materials for this year’s repairs. Only the roof lacked a volunteer worker.

  Katie realized she’d been counting drips from the leaking communal kitchen roof. One hit the plastic pail every three and a half seconds. At each hundred she’d start over. It was a habit—a compulsion?—she’d used to distract herself from the terrors and tedium of childhood. Leaks, curse words, planes flying overhead, she’d count them all.

  She was supposed to volunteer for the project list which had been drawn up last summer at the annual meeting, but she didn’t have the kind of skills it took to do these things. She tapped her foot, counting one, two, three, four to some opening rock riff she couldn’t identify.

  “I like the moss,” she told them. “The lodge looks like a gingerbread house. We’re cozy with the big shadowy woods creaking around us and the wolves howling—”

  “They killed the wolves off a century ago,” Dorothea noted sadly. She was a tall, red-haired woman whose quick long fingers knitted bright yellow yarn.

  Aster’s voice got louder and deeper as she spoke, like someone who’d been screaming. “That’s a whole other project. And we’re not using poisons up there.” She glowered at the group and turned back to Katie. “Poison is the quick method, the American way. But rain will wash the moss killer into the ground.”

  Spruce, the big, awkward, quietly butch kid, said gently, “When I put off a small job, it only gets bigger.”

  “Kate,” explained R, “has never owned property. This is all new to her.” R sat cross-legged in the middle of a sprung couch, back straight, writing notes of the meeting in a bold hand. “I have to agree with the rest, Kate. This is no fairy tale. Nobody’s going to take care of lesbian roofs but lesbians.”

  “You’re making me homesick for the trailer park where I came up—flat roofs too dry for moss. The gringo manager fixed what got fixed.”

  “We don’t want the man on our land. It’s like R says,” Solstice explained in a tone that hinted of deeply held beliefs, “the leak will get too big for us to handle and we’ll have to bring a man up here. I think they talk about us in town enough.”

  She and Jeep had named Solstice the original retro queen because of her harem pants, Birkies, hemp pullovers, and boycott of deodorant. “So I volunteer. I’d probably make it worse.”

  “I could teach you how to do it right,” said Spruce.

  R placidly asked Spruce, “Is that your privileged white liberal guilt volunteering?”

  Did R think Spruce was coming on to her? If so, it was the first sign of possessiveness she’d seen. R made a strange white knight. Before Spruce could respond, Katie tweaked R. “No. I
t’s my kind of politically incorrect butch coming to the rescue!”

  Only Nightfall laughed. R shook her head. Katie noticed quick glances toward R to see how she was taking Katie’s rebellion.

  Spruce, face red again, mumbled, “I was only trying to help.”

  She was pretty hot in patched jeans and a black T-shirt rolled up her brawny arms. Spruce was a good name for her. “How about if this magnificent mujer who actually likes this kind of work does the repair while I tape her?” Katie suggested. Aster laughed. “Spruce doesn’t talk.”

  Spruce grinned, pretended to flex her biceps, and said, “Oh, I could talk into the tape.”

  “And I could interview you while you worked. How you got your skills, what projects you’ve done. What brought you to the land?”

  “I’ve only been here eight months.”

  “Still,” Katie insisted, although it was plain Spruce’s shyness would spoil her as a subject, “why couldn’t I, like, do an interview and paint the goat shed? I could handle that.”

  “Because it’s too rainy? Painting has to wait until the summer,” Dorothea explained. “And we have no goats anymore.”

  Katie read from the list, “Patch roof? Clean chimney? Be real! They used to make little kids do that in Dickens’s books.”

  The group looked at her, but Spruce was grinning, eyes cast down. Katie wondered if Spruce was crushed out on her. She’d do the roof for her, no problem, and on the QT. Katie felt like a user, but the child would get her moment in the spotlight even though she wouldn’t get the girl. God, she was really contemplating this rural film project, wasn’t she? She was supposed to be freeing herself from being obsessively on the prowl for stories, but this project could be very different.